Providence, Rhode Island, 21 December (H.S.): Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, the Portuguese national identified by authorities as the perpetrator behind the tragic shootings at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), had forsaken a luminous academic trajectory in physics for a subdued career in information technology before resurfacing violently in the United States.
On Saturday, December 13, 2025, Valente, aged 48, unleashed a barrage of over 44 rounds from a 9-millimeter firearm inside an auditorium at Brown University's Barus & Holley building in Providence, Rhode Island, during a student study session.
This assault claimed the lives of two promising undergraduates—Ella Cook, vice president of Brown's College Republicans and a parishioner at Alabama's Cathedral Church of the Advent, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, an Uzbek American recent high school graduate—while injuring nine others.
Two days later, on December 15, Valente allegedly murdered Nuno Filipe Gomes Loureiro, a 47-year-old MIT professor of physics specializing in nuclear fusion and magnetic reconnection, at Loureiro's residence in Brookline, Massachusetts; the two had been classmates at Lisbon's prestigious Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) during the late 1990s.
Valente's early brilliance shone at IST, where physicist Filipe Moura, his teaching assistant in 1996-1997, hailed him as the best student of his year, though noted his intense drive to excel often sparked conflicts with peers.
Disillusioned after roughly one year at Brown University around 2001—dismissing the program as a waste of time and his cohorts as incompetent—Valente pivoted to a software developer role at Portugal's Sapo internet portal, where colleagues recalled him as sweet, humorous, patient, yet oddly reserved and mismatched for his physics pedigree.
Hailing from a middle-class family in Entroncamento near Lisbon as their only child, he had severed ties with his parents amid his Brown tenure, later securing U.S. lawful permanent residency via the green card lottery in 2017.
U.S. and Portuguese authorities continue probing Valente's motives, scrutinizing his fractured academic history and personal estrangements.
On Thursday, December 18, 2025, a massive manhunt culminated at a Salem, New Hampshire, storage facility, where Valente ended his life via self-inflicted gunshot as agents closed in, leaving behind a satchel, additional firearms, and ballistic evidence linking him to both crimes. A federal complaint cited interstate firearm transport with felonious intent, underscoring the premeditated nature of his rampage.
While Moura depicted Valente's ego as a pedagogical challenge, fellow IST alumni contested this, portraying him as typically arrogant for a gifted student sans overt antisocial traits.
Researcher Hugo Tercas lamented the irony, likening IST physics cohorts to children in adult bodies amid ego-driven insecurities. No prior criminal record or explicit warnings surfaced, leaving communities grappling with the abrupt descent of a once-exceptional mind.
Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar
